, anybody in about a month in terms of talking about the fiscal cliff. so everyone has sort of delayed really facing all of th up against the deadline now, jon. jon: that seems clear. ed henry at the white house there. ed, thank you. stay on it for us. for more on this let's bring in the editor of "campaigns & elections" magazine, shane deapril. campaigns and elections might be appropriate here because some say there is a lot of political posturing going on. you have said the feeling in washington it might actually be better to go over the cliff and come back and negotiate. why? >> yeah. now, this is of course purely political campaign calculation here, tossing aside the nation's fiscal health frankly. for both side i think there is good argument to be made for congressional leaders, democratic leaders and republican leaders in particular, there may be less political risk here actually if we do go over the cliff and figure out a solution very quickly afterwards. if you go back to what happened with plan b, speaker boehner could not get, get that through